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Marie Antoinette-
35 Plays1 month ago
This is a classic coming-of-age tale about a simple girl who just wanted to have a good time. The basic concept of equality and poverty just wasn't part of her vibe ok??? She simply chose to ignore the haters...until that was no longer an option. Join us for a ride through endless opulence and the dumbest societal rules ever created. Let them wear converse!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0422720/?ref_=ttmi_rvi_i_3
https://anastasiabrownn.medium.com/sofia-coppolas-marie-antoinette-its-masterful-costume-design-84b8145ed79d
Music: Cassette Deck by Basketcase
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Transcript
Live Podcast Announcement
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, friends. We have a big announcement today. We are going to be doing our first ever live podcast episode.
00:00:10
Speaker
Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Everybody who is planning to attend the PAX East conference this May in Boston, you can come and see us.
00:00:22
Speaker
We will be performing a show on Saturday evening in one of the official rooms at PAX. We have like a time slot and everything. It's absolutely insane. feels really unreal and strange. Yeah.
00:00:38
Speaker
And for anyone who obviously will not be able to attend the convention, we are planning to record the episode and be able to release it as a bonus for everyone to hear, even if you're not able to see us in person.
Super Mario Brothers Movie Discussion
00:00:51
Speaker
We will be covering the Super Mario Brothers movie from 1993. So not the animated, nothing that may maybe makes sense because I haven't seen the new movie. No, no We are covering 1993 movie that has minimal things to do with the game. And we are pretty thrilled about it because that was a very formative movie, I think, for a generation. Oh, absolutely. Crazy, crazy stuff.
00:01:21
Speaker
And if you've never seen it, my God, you need to see it to see Goombas, to see the the real life um envisioning of Princess Peach, of Mario, Luigi, all of these things. All your favorite friends. All your favorite friends.
00:01:35
Speaker
And it's going to be probably a little bit bonkers and also probably a little bit shorter than our regular episodes because we will have a very ah strict time slot. But um yeah, come and see our faces in in real time. And ah yeah, let's be friends in the real. yeah Yeah. And if you know anyone that is going to PAX and you're not, please tell them to come see us. Tell them to say hi. Like we would love to meet people and have a good time. and Heck yeah.
00:02:02
Speaker
I'm Melinda. I'm Ariel. This is Hot Set, the movie podcast about costume design.
00:02:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome back. It's us, your two Gabby Gabbers. ah Today i do have some windows open, so sorry in the distance if you have amazing hearing or are listening in with earbuds.
00:02:34
Speaker
You might hear somebody
Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette: A Cinematic Exploration
00:02:36
Speaker
mowing the lawn and it's just going to be what it's going to be. know when it's springtime. And they're like, open these windows and I have to live. They'll kill me in my sleep.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah. Today's episode is ah perhaps totally different for us. It's going to be a mildly chaotic episode about Marie Antoinette. I know we're always totally on topic.
00:03:01
Speaker
But this is Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette from 2006, believe. i believe And the little synopsis about it is the retelling of France's iconic but ill-fated queen Marie Antoinette.
00:03:12
Speaker
From her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at 14, to her reign as queen at 19, and to the end of her reign, and ultimately the fall of Versailles. ah Really nuts to say that with a smile, but also apropos.
00:03:28
Speaker
Yeah. This movie, I didn't see ever. This is my first time seeing it. Right. And you've seen it before because I think you suggested it to the list.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen it a couple times. um I didn't see it when it came out. I saw it a few years later, but I think I've seen it maybe like two or three times since then because I enjoyed it as a film and enjoyed the costumes. Who would have guessed?
00:03:53
Speaker
ah you know I I enjoyed it. i I didn't really... have any feelings about it. I think it was one of those like right out of high school that everybody was like, oh my God, my man. And it was just like, okay, it's like when you get like a sticker on a book, that's like a book club approves this. And it's like, you can't tell me what to do.
00:04:16
Speaker
Yeah, all of a sudden I get very contrary. I'm like, I don't know, maybe I don't like it What are you going to do about that? Yeah. And it's like, it's not a thing I can control. It's just in my brain. so um but yeah, like full chock full of big names that were like totally active at the time. i was surprised to see Rip Torn.
00:04:36
Speaker
um There was Jason Schwartzman, Kirsten Dunst, Steve Coogan, Judy Davis. Yeah. um asia argento which i haven't seen in a long time molly shannon that one is the most unexpected rose burn expected rose burn marianne faithful jamie dornan tom hardy like so so many more beyond that i really liked seeing marianne faithful it's like a little just she played marie therese um I believe Maria Teresa.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, Maria Teresa. Empress Maria Teresa. So Maria Antoinette's mother. and And amazing singer. R.I.P. um But this, these costumes, I would always hear this movie in the context of the costumes.
00:05:21
Speaker
Like even from people who don't care about costumes. Yeah. They really wanted to talk about it. And i kind of love that my impression was from other people's impressions of the costumes because that's how affecting they were.
00:05:35
Speaker
And that I feel also that it had such an American POV of this like and style of telling this French story, making it, you know, this like dreamscape music video, like Wes Anderson adjacent kind of feel that that made it more like you could see how it appealed to the American audience if that makes sense like yeah I think it does like oh my god did you know that they wore clothes back then and it's like yes welcome they wore a lot of clothes have you heard so many clothes dear god so many clothes and that we like just are running down a hill through so many different styles that were affected by this family and this time period and um
00:06:28
Speaker
in the state of the world today watching this, like watching the bourgeoisie, know, bullshit. Just the complete lack of self-awareness. Complete lack of placement in the universe, like all of this. And yes, like with this movie, they're very much trying to show that, yes, both Louis the 16th that she married, played by – 16, yeah. Yeah, 16 and Marie Antoinette, that both of them were teenagers. They were teenagers.
00:06:58
Speaker
but Babies. They were butt babes. And that they were, you know, just the construct of being a royal and living in this one place and especially somewhere like Versailles, which was like a fantasy anyway. That was like built by the Sun King. Was it Sun King 14th? Louisville? Yeah, the 14th. Yeah.
00:07:17
Speaker
But it's just like it was meant to be this place where you had court dress and where everybody was a peacock on a leash. And in return, the royals were...
00:07:31
Speaker
Also on a leash and every single step of their lives was ceremonial and presentational and not independent and not connected to freaking reality.
00:07:45
Speaker
This really hammered that home. Yeah. It really did. Like for me, the that something that I was really paying attention to is like, there's so many these like tableaus where it's just these like giant groups of people just staring at her staring at the two of them. Like, there's like,
00:08:07
Speaker
People everywhere just standing and staring en masse in like the most like opulent clothing ever, in the most opulent places you can imagine.
00:08:18
Speaker
and it's just like, this is not life.
Costume Design Analysis
00:08:23
Speaker
This is not a way to live a life. And it had to end. It had to.
00:08:29
Speaker
It had to. And there was also this design-wise, what i really loved is that, okay, Let's give her her fair due. Elena Canoneiro is the, and I'm so sorry I'm saying that wrong, as per usual, but ah is the costume designer for this. And she grew up in Genoa. And um she has this like very amazing career that- Wonderful.
00:08:54
Speaker
Definitely you've seen some of her work before. So you talking about that, those big tableaus, So design wise, I had to look at her CV because I was like, wait a minute, this feels very, and I was right. She's worked with Wes Anderson before. Yeah. So it felt, and Wes Anderson also has these tableau situations that happen.
00:09:18
Speaker
And so it's like a different way of encountering ah moving pictures. Yeah. Kind of making them feel like they're not. And so the compositions of a lot of these tableaus, it's almost like you're working backwards with the costumes. Right. And all the rest of the design as well. But with the costumes, like these ensemble moments – the color palettes, all the stuff that's going on works together so well that it's like you're looking at this tableau, for example.
00:09:48
Speaker
There's a very specific, there were so many, but there's a very specific scene, the coronation. It's the coronation scene yeah yeah where people are even standing facing the camera Yeah, it looks like a painting. So the composition is like these traditional paintings. Yes. And then it's like, this is what we want.
00:10:09
Speaker
And so they have this image in their head, like the design team, we want this to be the final result. And the costuming is okay, here's how we get there. So this is what everybody's wearing in these disparate moments, then they're all together right here, boom.
00:10:21
Speaker
And it's just like, what a way to work that. And I mean, yes, that's what you do in like musical theater, right? You think of your big musical numbers. Yeah. Yeah, you come up with a visual that's like, this is the finale, or this is like the the one note in the song, or like, whatever it is. And so like, we need everybody to be here, and we need everybody to be in a line, and we need everybody to be kicking this one foot, like all of that kind of stuff.
00:10:44
Speaker
But it is interesting To see it in this, but like it makes so much sense for this film because of what these people's lives were like and how presentational every second of your day was. Everything.
00:11:05
Speaker
And it's like, just knowing now hundreds of years in the future, you know, and you can say this about pretty much any royal lineage, know,
00:11:16
Speaker
in any part of the world is that yes, they may hold all this power. Some of that is figurative because there are always people working around them who actually leave their palace, who actually ride out and not like in a, in this movie, Jason Schwartzman is the Dauphin and who becomes the king. Um,
00:11:40
Speaker
He's always going hunting. But the thing is that he's not going hunting in normal woods. He's going hunting in manicured parks where he has gardeners who've released animals. And he's always wearing perfectly clean clothing. you know like He's not out camping and roughing it and like starving. like He's just...
00:11:58
Speaker
on a lamb just i having a great time like there's a picnic blanket and like so you like you if you killed an animal i'm sure he just like doesn't even touch the dead animal he hands like somebody rushes in and like does whatever like he's he has absolutely no concept of like the machinations ah to create the life that he has like that's part of it And what I love is that, okay, so we follow Marie Antoinette 14, leaving Austria, which is where she was born, and being sent to um this encampment that's like on the border.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah. I love this scene so much. Yeah. it's so It's so awful because it's just like such a cultural shift is that she's welcomed in and basically immediately has lost any agency that she did have, which is she's literally stripped of her own clothing. She's stripped of her her puppy. She's stripped of her maids.
00:12:58
Speaker
Like everything that she had before they say you cannot bring in. So anything Austrian stays here. And like you go forward French as the Dauphine. So she is entering in this like very sweet little dress that does make her look younger. And also her hair is like free flowing. Very natural. Yeah.
00:13:18
Speaker
And I don't know Austrian dress history, but in a lot of European dress history, little girls, little girls, unmarried girls, do have their hair down or have their hair in a braid of some kind.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say that continues. Like, I think yeah that is something that... Keeps going at least until like the 20th century starts. It goes for a while. And like hair always tells so many stories. No matter where you are in the world, hair tells you everything. Yeah.
00:13:47
Speaker
And so she goes in with her hair down with I think maybe like a little braid crown or something. Yeah, or like a little ribbon or something. But it's yeah it's like Kirsten Dunst's hair. Like it's it's her hair. It's not curled and like whatever. It's literally her hair. And when she walks out of this really – here Like, I would never want this experience for myself. Just to have these people I don't know, strip me down, look me over and put this new outfit on.
00:14:17
Speaker
She walks out as a little French woman where her hair has been powdered, it has been curled, it is now up. She has this little tiny... aunt that I adore. This little tricorn, little baby tricorn. And it's so interesting to me like because ah her yeah I don't really know anything about the history of Austrian clothing. My bad, my bad. um It was interesting to me that like the the color palette shift here is not like wild because she's in this like soft kind of like dove gray, slightly bluish color in her Austrian clothing, but she's got like
00:14:56
Speaker
It's more, it's still like beautiful and, and like exquisite and like very high end. She's not like. Yeah. Different understructure. Yeah. Different. henry It's simpler.
00:15:08
Speaker
It's simpler. lower. Yeah. It covers are more, it's like more cold weather kind of appropriate. It's got like these bigger sleeves, got like a higher neck, but like the dress that she comes out in that they put her in is this like icy blue silk satin dress that they like put her in that is like it's not that it's like going from you know Black and white to, like, technicolor.
00:15:33
Speaker
It's not even, like... it's But it's so different. It's so different. It's moving. And every time we see, like, her her mother dictating a letter or something from her palace in Austria, she's wearing black or more sober colors.
00:15:47
Speaker
And basically what we're immediately locked into the second she's put in this first gown is that she is now a doll and somebody remarks she looks like a child and it's like she does she is one but um she looks like a doll now now she is not a person she is this creature of this country and so it's like she is more formal now in that she can't just interact with the world And that is very true of the French aristocracy at the time, because like Rip Torn is playing um the grandfather of the Dauphin, who I believe is Louis the fourteenth so
00:16:31
Speaker
i think he is actually Louis He is the XV. I had it up. That's not how it works. Yeah, I had to look it because I wasn't sure because I knew there was a Louis XIV, a and a XVI. Yeah.
00:16:44
Speaker
And there's time in between. Yeah, like when they called him grandfather, was like, oh, he's Louis the fourteenth But then I was like, he doesn't look like Louis No, he doesn't. But you know what? Yeah, so he's the 15th. And so he inherited this reign, this slavery.
00:17:01
Speaker
style of reign in which you come to this palace specifically for these purposes. And like, um I should have boned up on this, but of course I didn't because I'm not an academic and I don't claim to be, but like the differences between, you know, Versailles, Marseilles, like all these different palaces. Yeah.
00:17:19
Speaker
Yeah, I had to study this a little bit when I was in school because we were doing yeah ah show that was set in the reign of Louis the fourteenth specifically. And he's he's the one that built for Psy. But it was really interesting to learn about the history of it because you're like, wow, this place is crazy. And like these people are acting insane. And then you like read about it and you're like, oh that was the point. Because yeah he... like he realized that if he sort of trapped everybody in one physical location and created all of these titles and like rules and absolutely like insane, like complicated ways that they had to all behave and act all the time, they would be too busy, like scrapping it up with each other for like breadcrumbs of,
00:18:13
Speaker
influence over the society aspect that they wouldn't have time to actually challenge his power as the king. yeah Thank Yeah. Like usual, you said that perfectly. And so like Versailles is very known for its gardens, for all these things. And it's because like you just said, it is a trap.
00:18:32
Speaker
It's a trap. It's a trap which so many of these people can't necessarily leave because if they're under the eye of the king, he knows that they're not. technically, um you know, scheming against him in ah in a power move. And so what that over a couple of generations led to was a monarchy that ignored the people. And am I simplifying it? Yes.
Audience Reaction and Historical Context
00:18:56
Speaker
But like, they ignored the people because they were no longer amongst the people. They were way out in this like, fucking palace. Like this weird...
00:19:08
Speaker
Like non real life. So it was very surreal, the soundtrack interacting with these, you know, eighteen century clothes and mores. And it was like,
00:19:20
Speaker
It really heightened because I remember when it came out that some people were divided, right? Some people really liked the movie because of what it was and some people hated that it wasn't more accurate, whatever.
00:19:32
Speaker
And it's like, no, no, no. no I'm fully for this as an example of costume breaking the rules of... accuracy to tell the story because there are wildly bright costumes wildly bright saturated things here that would not be this bright because those kinds of dyes don't exist yet and like there also was something very a couple things very specific um But I mean,
00:20:03
Speaker
I just, okay. But at the same time, like, if if there is anyone listening who hasn't seen eighteenth century clothing, like, therere some of it still exists. You can see it, like, every once in a while, it'll be, like, on display. Or you can get, like, books that have, like, really nice, high-quality photographs.
00:20:22
Speaker
And, like, it is crazy-looking and over-the-top for this class of people. It's nuts. Like, just thinking of Pannier, right? Mm-hmm. So Panniers, P-A-N-N-I-E-R, Panniers, are those specific understructures that go under gowns that maximize your hips.
00:20:45
Speaker
And it makes your waist look tiny because you're wearing stays at this time. And it makes your torso look long and slender. And it makes your shoulders look slender because it exaggerates your hips so much. But it's basically this like in certain spots rounded like rectangle that you are in the middle of And so it's not like super wide.
00:21:10
Speaker
Like if you're looking at you from the side. Like front to back. Front to back. It's not super wide. yeah But it is very wide from yeah side to side. yeah So to like – to go through doorways, depending on the doorway, you would have to go in side first. Like, do all these things. And, you know, some of them were comically large. You had to, like, parallel park yourself into the room to, like, get inside. It's like...
00:21:36
Speaker
Some were were massive and some were smaller because like, you know, you had to be able to fit x amount of people into a room. um And let's let's start there. So let's let's rewind to that first tent scene.
00:21:50
Speaker
When she walks out in that blue-gray. gown. She's got this jacket on and it flips up because of the wind and her movement for one second.
00:22:01
Speaker
And this is where I got picky. And i I made a couple notes like this and I was like, you need to let this go. Just accept what this is. It's the 18th century by MTV and um just love it. So I noticed that I don't think that that jacket was lined.
00:22:19
Speaker
um because when it flips up on the bottom, you can see the seams. ahha And i was like, come on, man. You didn't even have to fully line it. You could have just lined it a little bit. i Just like that little peplum part.
00:22:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Just a little peplum. And I was like, that's fussy. Calm down. But then we went forward a little bit. And um the skirt of that dress, I believe, was was all The hem was a little weird.
00:22:46
Speaker
or it was the dress No, it was the dress when she was leaving Austria, I think. The hem was a little bit wonky. And was like, mm-hmm. Like, oh, let me get by my ah magnifying glass out.
00:22:57
Speaker
What do I see here on the screen? This is crazy. I was like, okay, we can let this go now. So it made viewing it so much more fun not to pick apart little tiny things like that because there are so, so many costumes. Like don't don't let yourself fall down that that mountain.
00:23:19
Speaker
And it's so many stories are being told. And like um I freaking loved that dress that we first see her in. She also has this like pinked ribbon Oh, that and when i say that ribbon, like lacy, like choker situation is like repeated a lot. Like we we see a few different versions of it and I love it every single time because it's like, yes, you are trapped, my dear. Like throat the It's your collar. height
00:23:51
Speaker
And that is exactly how you're going to be taken out of this world. Like everything about that space is very important. And um I did have a note for this dress that I like I'm picking apart that this is a plea.
00:24:06
Speaker
If you're going to wear a crinoline, if you're going to wear a hoop, if you're going to penne, if you're going to wear any of these things, if you're going to design something that requires those.
00:24:18
Speaker
Look at this dress when she first enters Versailles. And i want you to see that you can see the entire understructure beneath this gown because there are not enough layers between the structure and the gown.
00:24:31
Speaker
They don't have to be heavy, but they just need to take some of the weight. The edge off. because Yeah. but Take the edge off. Because if you can see all of that structure and it's not an intentional part of your design – It's going to drive me somewhere in my gnome hole that I live in, my hobbit hole, insane.
00:24:51
Speaker
I'll feel it and I'll know it's happening. But just like, especially with bigger budget things, I'm always like, no, come on. petticoat doesn't cost that much.
00:25:03
Speaker
Yeah, throw another petticoat in there. It could be a very lightweight one on top of, you know, whatever's like the chemise, then like build up from there. But it's just like, it it's distracting from all the very hard work for someone like me who can't fucking let it go.
00:25:19
Speaker
And so after that, I stopped bothering to look because I was like, I don't want to pick this apart. I think it's so much fun. Like the way that um usually, okay. Usually when I think of dress in this period, I think of a lot of like, and this isn't true.
00:25:35
Speaker
It's just what I think is a lot of like matchy matchy. Like, I'll think of, you know, a robe a la Française that has like incredible embroidery. Yeah. But that it's ribbons, bows, things like that will match the garment and they'll be in the same color palette or family type thing, right? There's a lot of contrast in this movie that's really fun.
00:25:58
Speaker
There's a lot of like – there's um There's this dress that Marie Antoinette is wearing when she's really struggling with the fact that she and Louis aren't um being intimate and that her position is really threatened, where it's this like cream gown with like floral embroidery.
00:26:19
Speaker
And she's in church and it's just a flash where you see that she has red fingerless gloves. And then the next scene, she's still wearing the gown. She's still wearing all of that after leaving church.
00:26:29
Speaker
And she's at breakfast now. But that one scene with those red gloves, and I believe that she's wearing like a... a blue choker. i was just like, these are colors that are, there are like some primary colors. There are some hot saturated colors.
00:26:45
Speaker
There's some wild color combinations. And then there's just like something like these red gloves and this cream dress. And you're like, this is fun. This is emphasizing this like playful,
00:26:58
Speaker
um teenage girl who's like setting fashion trends and is like, this is this is part of your her character that you're trying to emphasize and you're doing it by showing things that you wouldn't see if you went to a museum.
00:27:11
Speaker
I do feel like um maybe something that it can be sort of lost with stuff from this era is this idea that like you spend as much money as you can to get like the best version of this thing that you can get. it like Especially like someplace like Versailles, where like it's all about trying to be like, I have money, i have power, i have whatever, whatever.
00:27:40
Speaker
Like you would spend as much money as you could to get like the best gloves that you could get. And you're going to keep wearing those gloves for like any occasion where they're they make sense or whatever for like, however long.
00:27:58
Speaker
So like, i think that something that we maybe can kind of like forget when we're just like watching a movie or whatever is like, that is the nicest lace you could get. She's going to wear the nicest lace that she has. It might not actually match the dress that well, but for these people, it's like it matches because it's so expensive that it's going to be worn. And it's more about like, I have the most money.
00:28:26
Speaker
i have the most power. It's not even like necessarily like that. This thing matches my dress very well. It's look how much money I spent on this thing. You're going to see it. And so it's like,
00:28:38
Speaker
And it's interesting in costume because we do kind of tend to be like, and here's my this outfit and all the things go with this outfit, but you don't have to do that. And it is ah kind of an expectation that people might have that that's what they're going to see. But like, you don't have to do it that way. And obviously, there's times where our designer didn't.
00:28:58
Speaker
And I appreciate that. Because like you said, it's like a teenage girl She's setting trends. She is a fashion icon of like this era for good or bad. ah well ah But yeah, ah it's just nice to kind of see something a little unexpected while still in like the framework of what is accurate.
00:29:19
Speaker
There's a little bit of like anachronism, right? Yeah. but yeah But that's not so loud. I mean, like the first anachronism that punches you in the face is the first...
00:29:30
Speaker
visual. Marie is like leaning back on a little like chaise and she has a maid massaging her feet or something. And that maid is in a black and white little French maid's uniform.
00:29:42
Speaker
Those existed in history in Victorian England were the black like maid gown with the white apron, but they were never sexy little maids like this ensemble. That became like a stereotype much later.
00:29:59
Speaker
I laughed. I saw that. I was like, we're in it. We're doing it. I was just like, let's get this. Because no matter what, the anachronisms, they were emphasizing the story. They were emphasizing like just how presentational all of this was. And like in in the real world...
00:30:17
Speaker
These gowns, these this court dress that was like insane would have bankrupted so many. yeah Which is why they would risk this is so that the king wouldn't kill them or take their title or do any of these things.
00:30:34
Speaker
Again, simplifying. But like you would have to take one of these gowns and have your dressmakers – undo the stitching and use that fabric again in a different way for a different gown, like mixing and matching over time, because there is no way that you would have, you know, as like a baron or whatever, you wouldn't have that kind of money necessarily. The king might,
00:31:05
Speaker
because he had access to all the country's money, but like you might not. So you would have to be very creative, which is another thing to emphasize what you were saying, which is that you would mix and match because everything you had was quality, but you would use it no matter what.
00:31:19
Speaker
And so I really, really loved that. And like there is also this like evening parlor scene where, where um i believe it's Marie Kirsten Dunst who's wearing um like a pink dress with black ribbons or something.
00:31:38
Speaker
There's something where it's like very, very like stark black against and like she's got like pink feathers at her shoulders at times.
Craftsmanship and Historical Fashion
00:31:47
Speaker
Like it's just all these things to show disposable wealth at every opportunity. Yeah. Like,
00:31:55
Speaker
the ruffling, the feathers, the ostrich feathers, and like all this stuff is just crazy. And it's like, especially right now, Looking at that and going, my God, just like knowing what's happening outside of Versailles. I know. yeah And like anybody who's read like had to read Tale of Two Cities in high school, like knows what's happening like in France. But like, it it's so crazy to think about like,
00:32:26
Speaker
You know, this is this is pre sewing machine era, like way, way before. um Every single item in this movie was made by human hands at at the actual time. Obviously, these yeah costume these costumes, obviously, yeah but like what they're representing were made by human hands. yeah The time they're representing made by human hands through human labor. So like every single little ribbon, every single little like bit of like gathering and like late like every single thing that is on this dress or jacket or like whatever, a human person put it there with their hands and their time. Okay.
00:33:08
Speaker
Let's get into it. Sleeves rolled up. So when you look at historical paintings, I'll focus on historical European paintings because this is taking place in Europe. And that's where my knowledge is based. Thank you, college, for not really spreading out. um When you look at old European paintings, you will see people where lace is very featured and lace will be featured in a cuff or around the neck.
00:33:36
Speaker
Um, but you know A ruff around the neck. It could be a collar or it could be cuffs at the end of sleeves. ah Maybe a cap. But like these are very, if you were to lay it out, these would not be massive pieces because what they were took lot.
00:33:54
Speaker
a million years. like That's an exaggeration. but No, literally. But took many hours. And then you see all of these people and you can go to European museums and elsewhere in the world as well. And you can see these gowns, you can see these these coats, these just d'accord. You can see these pieces, these waistcoats that still have intact embroidery.
00:34:19
Speaker
And there are even uncut waistcoats that were in the process of being embroidered or had been finished when they were abandoned and never completed. All of those took so long.
00:34:32
Speaker
Okay. A long time ago, I went with my mother to Kensington Palace in in London. And they had an exhibit at the time just one room.
00:34:43
Speaker
um i don't remember what the whole, i think the whole um thing some of it was like Georgian or something, but in this one room, it was this specific gown that would have been from this era. And it was and embroidered court gown. And the whole s thing was embroidered.
00:35:04
Speaker
I could not even tell you how much yardage the person that it would have sat on was much shorter than myself. I'm five eight. So the person was probably like five foot five. um But it was full skirted, you know, massive.
00:35:17
Speaker
yeah And they had set up mannequins to like hold the gown at certain places and look like they were seamstresses. And the the whole important thing was that the lighting in the room was mimicking candlelight.
00:35:31
Speaker
And it had the information in the room was about the seamstresses, which is why it sticks in my mind and why I'm obsessed with it. Because there were houses of seamstresses who at the end of their utility, at the end of their life, were blind because they couldn't see anymore after having done this kind of work for so long in poor lighting.
00:35:53
Speaker
And that tells you how long it took to embroider these pieces. And so... Just that alone is so much riches. People would be um like highwaymen. Highwaymen would rob people in their carriages for their lace yeah because that's how expensive it was. And so like I will never stop banging on about this.
00:36:16
Speaker
Beating, finishing things like this. These are incredible skills that were never valued. like The people who actually did that were never quite valued enough. It was what they made that had the value. Absolutely. And like the skills of how to make it is like trapped in that person's brain. Forever. And they still were like very undervalued for like what they knew how to do.
00:36:41
Speaker
People like widows would, I think that, okay, this is a very partially remembered piece of information. So I'm going to just claim that it's not quite right. But there was a point in time where widows and possibly also like children and stuff would also do bobbin lacing for money.
00:37:03
Speaker
But it was like, it was the way that they could keep themselves. And like men might've also started at certain points being a part of this. Cause a lot of this is so like traditionally thought of as like female, right? Like feminine enterprises. But there were times when these things were so valuable that this is what would keep you from starvation is doing this. But the fact that these craftsmen were trying to not starve, that was their goal.
00:37:29
Speaker
And then people like this in Versailles would be wearing the result is just crazy. It's is nothing it's not that everybody was always like undervalued. I'm sure that there were many different like scales of value, but it was never like this. It's like today you have the label is like the house of whatever. Right.
00:37:53
Speaker
But you don't know who made that work. You just know the name of the designer and that will piss me off. Yeah. ah it could not come down to one person. it has to be like a team per garment to get it done.
00:38:07
Speaker
And it's just like, it's those And then you all have to be doing it the exact same way so that the look is uniform across a garment. And that is a highly trained skill. yeah And so it's always frustrating that these people are not the people who are able to like necessarily feed themselves reliably. Like, yes, maybe today you can, but like back then you could – do this repeatedly, but you were not necessarily making the money that it was worth.
00:38:34
Speaker
Because like if a king is wearing the lace that you were one of many people working for hundreds of hours on this lace and creating it, um the value is not being represented to you the same way that it is to them.
00:38:47
Speaker
There's just no way. And so watching all these people. It's almost like it was society was structured so unfairly we had have a violent reordering of society by killing a whole bunch of people because they wouldn't change and it's like watching we cannot underscore enough watching this royal group you know of of people prancing about cosplaying as poor people like i I literally wrote cosling as a shepherdess. Okay, so at the beginning, we have these gowns for the women that are called um robes a la Française. So it's a French style of French gown, yeah. ah The men's coats are called just decor. And those coats, when you look up that that style of coat, at this point, they're very much a cutaway.
00:39:46
Speaker
But like before in the... i mean Fashion history did not evolve very quickly. like It evolved, but it did not evolve every day, every season the way it does now because clothing- it just took cost too long to make. and It took so long to make. It cost money. It was a finite thing that you had to reuse and reuse and reuse. so like There are extant examples of robe- A la Française is where things were picked out.
00:40:13
Speaker
And then you can see where the original stitches were when it was re-sewn. You can see where the original seams were because of sun damage. And then it was like sewn back up again. So these things were part of a garment's life is that it would be reshaped when the style would change.
00:40:29
Speaker
Or when the wearer changed. this. If you change shape as the person wearing it, you've got to go in and reshape that dress so it fits you still. And you would pass that dress on. If it was like a beautiful, beautiful dress, put a pin in that, you would pass it on to someone. If you um favored someone, if you were very, very high in rank, you could give them a gown and that would be like so much money.
00:40:51
Speaker
And they could unpick that gown and and it would be looked at as whole cloth and it would be extremely valuable, right? so The style was this very courtly thing for this level of courtier, right? Like the regular French person was not wearing this style. There is not regular French person in this movie. No.
00:41:17
Speaker
Nothing even resembling a regular person in this film, which I appreciate. like Yeah, we're stuck in the fantasy the whole time. We're stuck in the trap the whole time. And so like we see them a little bit when they're the angry mob coming to Versailles at the very end. They're kind of just like a mass. Like you don't really see like individual people. It's dark. They've got torches. like And it emphasizes the point of view of the royals, right? Is that they yeah don't see individuals. They don't know these things. But it's like what what happened during this period was that the robe a la Française, this very courtly style that is super impractical to to working life or –
00:41:56
Speaker
you know, ah massive movement because it's meant to be in a palace. It's meant to be seen. It's meant for specific physicality. This we see towards the end of the movie evolve into the chemise a la reine, which means basically a chemise is an undergarment, right? it's the underdress of the queen.
00:42:14
Speaker
And so this was a very scandalous style when it was created. And we are seeing through the through the tone of the movie that she's a young girl who is like,
00:42:25
Speaker
Totally. Okay. There is a stereotype that I think has been a little bit debunked here and there. Like the whole let them eat cake thing. Right. this Yeah. We know she didn't say that. For everyone to totally blame Marie Antoinette for all this stuff. But if you do think of it the way that the film is, which is that she's a young woman who's totally kept away from the real world.
00:42:46
Speaker
And like, she's just trying to make herself happy, whatever. Like this is her world. This little bubble is her world. And she... Creates.
00:42:57
Speaker
Le Petit Trianon, which is this little French village. It's this idyllic, like, bullshit little village that costs an insane amount of money.
00:43:09
Speaker
It's on the grounds of Versailles. Like, it's not in the real world. yeah it's real. You can go there. It's a little park that's where she would go cosplay being poor.
00:43:22
Speaker
yeah And being poor to her was this, like... It is full on like TikTok trad wife content is what it is. She is putting on her little cotton. She's swapping out her silks for her little cotton.
00:43:39
Speaker
She's got gardeners like manicuring the flowers and the lawn. And she's like with clean animals that are just wandering without any...
00:43:49
Speaker
She walk in with her daughter and like reach into this perfectly clean little chicken coop and pull out an egg and be like, oh, the miracle of nature. Isn't this wonderful? Because like yeah it's so – The gardens are manicured. all – And like the the whole thing about the chemise al-haen is that it is an undergarment.
00:44:10
Speaker
Like it was meant she she brought this into fashion because she was rejecting the traditional court dress that she was brought into in this palace. It was so restrictive.
00:44:23
Speaker
And so like for so many reasons, it was restrictive. And this was her contribution to fashion history was saying, no, i don't want this. And having something that did not require the same structures. Like in a chemise like this, i don't i don't even know that your undergarments are going to be exactly the same as they were going to be with Yeah, it certainly seems like... sure you don't have pannier. It's a more unstructured garment. think she still has some like light stays underneath. There's definitely some kind of like structure and light shaping to the torso. They're less restrictive. And so the skirts are very like soft and flowy. And it it very much like when you think of... um Like in England, when you think of like Jane Austen, England...
00:45:10
Speaker
Versus like later Victorian era. yeah One is very Grecian inspired and one is much more tight and like engineered. And so this is this is what this was. It's like within her reign, it went from tight and engineered to light and flowy within this income level. because Right, because that's the thing is like, it's like, okay, it's made of cotton instead of the silk. But when you look at it, it is so fine. it is so thin. It is so perfect that like the amount of time and resources and and effort to make that cotton versus the silk is got to be the same.
00:45:47
Speaker
Was this the muslin? Was this muslin, cotton muslin? Yeah. I think so. Because what – Or like lawn, cotton lawn, i think is another term. Yeah.
00:45:58
Speaker
What was in India that um was totally destroyed by the British? Yeah. I don't know what it was called. Yeah. That was whole – But that's what it was like. Although it doesn't have the block printing or like – No, no, no. That's different. This is a very specific Muslim – That the East India Trading Company went to India and they cut the fingers off of the weavers and they like burned and destroyed the specific plant that they used to make this muslin because the muslin was so wanted because it was so thin you could see through it.
00:46:31
Speaker
Yeah. It was an ancient practice. And now it's starting to come back because I think that they like found old – like I don't know. Scientifically, it's a wonder and it's incredible. But it was a marvel of skill. This was not um block printed cotton. I don't even know that it ever had printing on it. It was just the muslin. ok And it was a horrific – tragedy and travesty that it was like the East India trading company in Britain tried to like erase it from the world so that they were the only people who had it.
00:47:03
Speaker
But this specific kind of muslin was transparent. And so very, very wealthy people wanted it because you would wear layers and layers and layers of it. And it was all so expensive.
00:47:14
Speaker
And so and it's it's like when you see beautiful. So when you see these pictures or like these paintings of Marie Antoinette wearing these chemises, It's possible that she's wearing this kind of muslin. Yeah, I don't actually know, but it is certainly possible.
00:47:29
Speaker
Yeah. And so but it is because it was like it went way older than that. Like it was very, very much wanted. But like these kinds of fabrics, the amount of fabric that they are wearing is money.
00:47:43
Speaker
It's money. And that, like, this character is pretending to be poor. I know. And we just hang out and party and do all this stuff. She's, like, drinking fresh milk from her little milking cow. Oh, my God.
00:47:55
Speaker
It's so fun. like But, okay. Did this movie make you have... like sympathy or empathy for the character?
Marie Antoinette: A Sympathetic Portrayal?
00:48:06
Speaker
That's my question. Because i think that that is the goal of the movie.
00:48:10
Speaker
Yes, it is. So I, Marie Antoinette has long been ah figure of many different things. And I feel two ways, as I do with anything else. And I'm going to start by saying there's a series of books that I read growing up, which I will recommend to anybody by Robin Hobb.
00:48:26
Speaker
um the assassins series, but there's one specifically that goes to a different country in this fantasy world. And this will make sense in a second. There's this female character who comes in and she's going to marry like this prince, whatever.
00:48:41
Speaker
And her people call her sacrifice because she is leaving their country to go to the country of the main character and be married into that Royal family. And she will be the representative of her country there. But her country refers to that as sacrifice. They understand that she is being sacrificed.
00:49:02
Speaker
Her life is, there's a role. It's not just her life. And so, Any marriage is always ah complicated subject because it comes from a business, basically arrangement.
00:49:19
Speaker
And so many people throughout human history have been sold into marriage. And that is what Marie Antoinette was. One of many people who was sold as a business deal for an alliance ah between two countries and to secure that alliance so that their children who take the throne would, you know,
00:49:36
Speaker
Yeah, blah, blah. so this is a person whose life was never ever going to be hers she was always a prize horse and so the way that this movie takes that story is it is showing you a young girl who's living in a snow globe And this snow globe is highly restrictive because like she can't even dress herself.
00:49:58
Speaker
She can't go to the bathroom by herself. She can't, she can't really bathe by herself. It's as she's getting older in this movie and she takes more power that now we're seeing her in a bathtub by herself. We're seeing her in a bedroom by herself.
00:50:11
Speaker
But like, it really truly was a thing that the closer you were to the King, you could even pay for the privilege You would watch him go to the bathroom. You would watch him evacuate his bowels.
00:50:23
Speaker
If you had a specific title, you would help him clean his body. And that was not a thing that really happened. Like, the I mean, it happened, but the king was not clean. Yeah. like it was horrendous um it's It's a thing in history that he was not clean. And so it's it's a horrific place to be is to be this prized cow who your utility is your ability to have children and to secure your husband's grasp on the throne and to ensure that there is an heir.
00:50:58
Speaker
And this is something that has been put on countless people throughout history. So I have so much empathy to all of these people who went before us who had that. And I can understand that this person, no matter who they are, their reality is going to be warped because they are never going to see a person as a person who does not also live within their fishbowl. They're never, unless they have like, you know,
00:51:26
Speaker
yeah some um Hollywood style philosophy, philosophical like philosophy teacher coming in and going like people are people, you know, it's just like, with the monarchy is never going to undo its own, its own self. The monarchy is always going to serve a monarchy.
00:51:41
Speaker
And like, I can have compassion for that, but I can also recognize that this is a person who contributed to a system that caused so much harm.
00:51:54
Speaker
And so i don't have to be limited to my empathy for the individual to have absolute disdain for the role. whereas like I think of her as like a tragic figure on like a Greek tragedy scale. yeah Like I don't think there's any other real outcome that was possible.
00:52:16
Speaker
it's It's interesting, i think, particularly because ah especially in in movies, we see so many that I think have like a similar POV, but with a male character.
00:52:30
Speaker
where they do a lot of bad stuff. They're not likable. They're not contributing anything like positive to the world. They're causing harm. They're killing people. They're doing whatever, but we're still...
00:52:47
Speaker
expected to hold them up as like a heroic figure through their flaws, the antihero, blah, blah, blah. And I find that trope really tiresome. i don't like those characters.
00:52:57
Speaker
And so it's like with Marie Antoinette, I feel like, especially in this movie, i I have this like weird desire to like kind of defend her a little bit because I'm so tired of like men defending the like scar faces of cinema history. So I'm sort of like,
00:53:17
Speaker
Why does she have to be held to a standard that, you know, what's his name from the Godfather is not held to in terms of like her conduct. So I don't agree with what she does. And I don't, I don't agree with the system that she represents and all that stuff. But it's sort of like, I can still like her as a character because fuck you cinema critics.
00:53:38
Speaker
Not even about her. and And it's like when you're talking about the actual historical figure, the same derision that I hold for her is the same that I hold for everybody else of her class. Yeah. Everybody else who is a part of that system. It's not just limited to her.
00:53:51
Speaker
But in cinema and stuff like that and the way that the stories are told. It's always like the women bear the brunt of the responsibility and the men are a tragic antihero or whatever. Right.
00:54:02
Speaker
In this movie, we we can feel all of those things for her and recognize that she was just raised in this bonkers fucking place and became an adult in this place without true concept of the cost.
00:54:16
Speaker
And like she hadn't been taught to care necessarily. Yeah. And so she is just the product of what she was raised to be. and i think it's like emblematic of like the brain rot of living in these types of situations. And it's something that we see being repeated right now. Like when people are talking about how, you know, going to spaces, empowering women and things where you're like, ma'am.
00:54:44
Speaker
And that's perfectly explained that. Because like I think that the POV of the story, the way that Sofia Coppola is telling this is very sympathetic of this young woman.
00:54:55
Speaker
yeah right it's just trying to show her being young and it captures that perfectly. But there's this point where she's in her Petit Trianon era where she's dressing like a milkmaid and she has this little theater and like she she loved going to the theater, etc. But now she's on stage and she's like milking a cow or something and she's like singing and she's dressed in these stays and like this what she thinks a little milkmaid would look like and everybody's like you did it oh my god it's so amazing and it's like oh god that's mortifying and
00:55:34
Speaker
okay Do you remember maybe maybe you're above all of this and and if you are then I applaud you but there is a moment in like the 2020 lockdown where Kris Jenner and Kylie Jenner went to a grocery store to go grocery shopping on their own.
00:55:51
Speaker
Because they needed to get out of the house. And they were like talking about how fun it was because neither of them could remember having gone grocery shop. And it's like that the same.
00:56:04
Speaker
That's it. That's it. it's i I remember people talking about that one and I saw the little the little like ah scene lit where Kylie is trying to cut a cucumber. Yeah.
00:56:15
Speaker
Oh, that was okay. Respectfully, that was Kendall. That was okay. Sorry. of these genders, like trying to cut a cucumber. And just it's bonkers because it it just shows when you have enough money, you are protected by your money from the world. And you are living in a fantasy that is beyond what people who are poorer, who are money poorer,
00:56:40
Speaker
do, which is playing video games or Stardew Valley, Animal la Crossing, like ah doing a TikTok dance or like entertaining themselves by watching something on Netflix.
00:56:51
Speaker
That is its own kind of protection, but it is on a completely different level from people who do not have to feed themselves. And so we are watching that. And then at the same time, we're watching the people around her who will not let her be responsible for her own body.
00:57:07
Speaker
Like Judy Davis, plays, I can't pronounce the character's name. I can't pronounce anyone's. But she's a contess. Yeah.
Versailles' Social Dynamics and Fashion
00:57:18
Speaker
Or the contess. And um she is the first person, basically, that Marie Antoinette meets when she's coming to that encampment to like leave all of her Austrian things behind.
00:57:30
Speaker
This is the woman who strips her of her Austrian-ness. And we see her throughout performing this role of never really answering any questions about how to do anything. But like... And yet she's like the exposition person that's kind of like explaining things for the benefit of us watching at home. Yes.
00:57:49
Speaker
And she'll like critique how Marie Antoinette didn't do something right that Marie Antoinette didn't know that she was supposed to do is how this character is presented. Now this woman
00:58:02
Speaker
You see her fret at certain points and like, you know, but it's Versailles. And it's like, she's kind of trying to convey, this isn't something that they want.
00:58:14
Speaker
It's what has to be. Because it's what the king decided. yeah And so... She's kind of the deliverer of that message and she's the enforcer of those rules. But this woman gets some of the craziest like gowns. There's one scene where she's just wearing it for a blip and it's still in the Robo La Francaise era.
00:58:37
Speaker
And it's like, can't, didn't stop I have this problem where I don't stop and like go back. I just keep going and go, what was the color? But it's like yeah it's like a lime and mint or like a yellow and sage combination that almost looks like the pattern on the fabric almost looks like an ikat weave where it has like, when you think of like a frequency line, how it's like jagged, it has like a weave that has that kind of flavor to it.
00:59:04
Speaker
And it's such a thing that you're like, where did you come from? Yeah. Like all the gowns that are too hot pink, you know, throughout. And like, they're just this fantasy of on top of a fantasy.
00:59:17
Speaker
So yeah, like an MTV fantasy on on what was a fantasy for rich people even then. And um it's not just rich people. it's specifically the royal court, which is yeah two separate things.
00:59:29
Speaker
yeah um But i do I do want to talk about... um another specific item. So it's like, I haven't really talked about men's clothing and I'm not going to, but I am going to I mean, I know i have like, I really wasn't like, I was, I was honing in so much more on the women's clothing yeah and the men's clothing. And it's an era when men's clothing was extremely opulent and colorful and embellished and like, not like the transformation that it's gone through now where men have like four colors they're allowed to wear.
00:59:59
Speaker
And one of them's black. And when you wear brighter colors now, people are like, oh So daring. And it's like back then men were wearing pink, hot pink. So putting a pin in where I was going, which is Jeanette's wedding dress. So we'll get back to that. But before I do, let's, I don't know, make a quick nod at the men's clothing. All right. It's great. I think. It's wonderful. It's so good. I think think there's a journey here where we see the Dauphin who becomes, you know, Louis XVI, the sixteenth king.
01:00:30
Speaker
And he's wearing... Pretty sedate things compared to a lot of the women. yeah And so a lot of the men are dressing after him the way that the women are dressing after the queen.
01:00:43
Speaker
um The brighter she gets, the brighter they get. The brighter he gets, the brighter they get. The more... sedate they get he gets you know like it's all feeding itself and so there is one coat that he wears twice and I loved that because I was like whoa but it was this like peach and it sort of looked a little bit more orangey on an interior i believe a breakfast scene and then he wears it again later when he's standing outside of like the zoo
01:01:17
Speaker
Oh, yeah. yeah and it's the same jacket worn twice and i love that very very much because even if like i i genuinely couldn't tell you if the king rewarre his clothes i i don't know yeah because it was such a weird reality i could not tell you but um Other people would have been. And so other people would have been, even if they like retailored it somehow, it would be having a full life.
01:01:45
Speaker
And so I liked seeing that very much. And, um, Yeah, men's clothing. but It happened. A quick nod too, before we get to the wedding dress, to all the stage shows that we see, the stage costumes are so great because they're so bonkers. like It's weird.
01:02:08
Speaker
They're so weird because they're totally taking like the pannier shape kind of thing and then doing what things we'll do now, which is reflecting your reality back at you, but as a hyperreality.
01:02:21
Speaker
And so it was like a hyperreality instead of a hyperreality instead of a fantasy. It was crazy. There was one project that I did in school where I was researching like actual um ah costume renderings from this period of ballet costumes.
01:02:43
Speaker
And they were so like, so these are their drawings that someone did like various designers or whoever, whatever you want to call them did.
01:02:54
Speaker
i In this period. and they were so off the wall and so impractical and so crazy. if if one of us like turned those renderings in for a show now, someone would pull you aside and be like, are you ill?
01:03:12
Speaker
Are you out of your mind? Like when you think there'd be like a gown made out of like lutes, like actual like wooden instruments. You're like, that's not real.
01:03:24
Speaker
ah That's hilarious. When you think of ballet and when you think of dance now, you think of stretch where you think of like body, body suits tight. You think of pancake tutus.
01:03:38
Speaker
You think of very kind of traditional things. And there's like rules broken within that. But even people looking at um impressionist paintings of ballet dancers in the late 1800s wearing loose things shocks people or long skirts.
01:03:56
Speaker
Yeah. Shock is a very strong word, but it surprises people. And so you keep going back and it just gets wonkier and wonkier and wonkier. And also like you had to be so – The history of theater is interesting, right? Because of course there were not microphones. There were not the lights that we have. It was gas lights. It was candle light.
01:04:19
Speaker
It was all these things. And you still had to do what you do now, which is project from a stage to the farthest person in the audience as much as you could. And so those costumes probably had to be bonkers to do that.
01:04:31
Speaker
And if your audience was royal, this was your time to be the most. Because if you could get patronage, this is where you would do it. So if you wanted to do something crazy, you would have to wheel out for the king. And it feels like they kind of like, they dunked their toes into that in the movie and I really enjoyed it.
01:04:51
Speaker
So those little wo guys aside, Marie Antoinette's wedding dress. you know about this gown? ah No. I mean, I know what I saw, but other than that, no.
01:05:07
Speaker
So my first instinct was Nobody wore white before a certain era. It was not a traditional wedding color. Right. but Before Queen Victoria in 1839, 40, whenever she got married, she wore the she set the trend that we still live under now, which is wearing white.
01:05:26
Speaker
And Marie Antoinette wore silver. Yeah. She wore cloth of silver, which... was silver. It was metal threads and would in certain lights certainly appear more on the wider side.
01:05:42
Speaker
But it was silver with diamonds. and Casual. Casual. Very low key. No big. yeah um It exists at the ah like the Royal Ottawa Museum.
01:05:55
Speaker
oh And it's slightly debatable whether or not it truly belonged to her. But there's like um I forget what the word is.
01:06:05
Speaker
for like yeah Is it like a like evidence chain of custody? Provenance. Yeah. there's I believe that there's like provenance for that. have the evidence chain. um And there's like a video on the web website about it. But the story is that when Marie Antoinette was killed, that all of her stuff was destroyed, right? and Symbolically or whatever. Yeah. And so it's like, sometimes that's not the case because why we still have extant garments, not just of hers, but of other people's is that people couldn't fit a garment.
01:06:37
Speaker
So it would be put in a trunk. The garment would be such that it was expensive in and of itself. So it was an investment. Like someone would die and they would leave a gown to their,
01:06:50
Speaker
you know, and ah descendant because the cloth was so expensive. And so somebody in her role, going hypothesize because this is a thing that would happen, is that if you were in their favor and they wore something, they might give it to you.
01:07:09
Speaker
But you would never be able to wear it in the same form. Right. Right. Because they're a queen or a king. but that thing might continue to exist.
01:07:21
Speaker
And if it was someone who potentially was given a wedding gown that belonged to Marie Antoinette or stole it, whatever. But if they... were fond of her or wanted to keep it or wanted to hide it so nobody stole it from them, all these things. like It could be passed down that way.
01:07:39
Speaker
it could have just, I don't know the story exactly of this gown, but there supposedly is her wedding gown. at ah the Royal Ontario Museum. That's awesome.
01:07:50
Speaker
And um that was pretty crazy because I was like, did she wear white? tell the internet And um I just thought that was like kind of interesting that like, yeah, there's not much that exists of hers. Yeah.
01:08:04
Speaker
But yeah that there could be something here or there. It is interesting to say it was silver because i was trying to look at it in the film and it was maybe it's just the quality of the lighting. But I was like, I think maybe it's gold or like a champagne. But silver makes sense. Silver makes sense.
01:08:23
Speaker
I think for sure okay, so this is me just being lazy because yes, I did go to school and if I were working at a design job, I would call everything what it's actually called, but I'm not going to do that right now. So like that style of gown, there are different layers, right? There's like the overdress and then there's the underskirt. So let's call it the underskirt.
01:08:41
Speaker
I believe that that is silver in the movie. and yeah There might be like silver accents and then the dominant color. I would not be surprised if it was more on the champagne Yeah. I mean, I believe silver for sure. Like it it was so much part of it. Yellowy lighting and yeah. channel But it was like, it was, I was like, wow, no, that actually is like based in reality there. That's.
01:09:06
Speaker
Nice. Like, yeah, it it just the whole design of this because it is so fantasy fever dream baby girl, like all over the place. The little bits in which it is based in reality, kind of pulls you back and it kind of reminds you that the movie is happening from the point of view of a young queen.
01:09:25
Speaker
So it feels sometimes like we're seeing everything from her eyes. so it might not have been that way. Right. Cause like then we'll be seeing a scene that she's not in That's just like a cabinet talking to the King about dire consequences of things and how it's going. And they're all very sedate in how they're dressed. um People around her who are further away from her inner circle are more sedate, but like in her little manic pixie queen girl, like fancy,
01:09:55
Speaker
It's all feathery and like light. and you know Okay. Where were the converse? You didn't see them? I missed them. ok there Okay.
01:10:06
Speaker
That was something. okay It's so interesting to me. That was something that like everybody talked about. And I assumed they were going to be important the first time that I saw the movie because so much was made of the fact that they had Converse in the movie. Oh my God. Can you believe it um I do want to give a shout out. Apparently a lot of the shoes in the movie were made by Manolo Blahnik.
01:10:36
Speaker
So welcome home there we go Just throwing that out there. take that but in your little Carrie Bradshaw, whatever. um There's a scene, yeah ah one of the many like let's buy stuff shopping spree montages in the movie, of which there are several. Thank God. oh my God. One would not have been enough. um There's a moment.
01:11:03
Speaker
where she's, ah there's like shoes. We're seeing shoes, like shoe after shoe. And there's ah like us a little shot where I don't think you even see her face. It's just like lower leg down to feet.
01:11:20
Speaker
She's putting on a pair of shoes and behind her feet on the ground are a pair of like powder blue high top converse.
01:11:33
Speaker
She doesn't wear them. They're not held up. They're not featured in the foreground. They are literally behind her feet for about one second in the movie.
01:11:46
Speaker
I don't understand why everyone that was the takeaway for the entire movie. For the whole thing. Everything that we see, the takeaway is that one pair of Converse that we see for one second.
01:12:00
Speaker
Am I glad they were there? Of course. Do I understand why everybody freaked out and lost their, I'm like, there is so much else going on in this movie. I feel like everybody was just like trained for an expectation.
01:12:16
Speaker
yeah Yeah. It's, it's like when I've complained before. About like some folks on YouTube who are costumers um kind of missing the point of costuming, which is that you're going to design and being limited. And I've been this person myself, but being limited to the expectation of exact historical representation is sometimes not the need that you're serving. And that's okay.
01:12:41
Speaker
Yeah. It's okay to bend the reality. And I like this bend because it's emphasizing, like we've said so many times, this fantasy of this like teenage girl whose priorities are to have fun, to make herself feel good, to make herself feel young and alive. And like, I've been muting myself, number one, because my mouth is a motor mouth. But number two, because I've been eating an orange because after watching the fucking macarons,
01:13:17
Speaker
And all the like sweets, I was just like like, need something in my soul is not this. Visually, I did not feel that way. Visually, I was like, I love this. It's all poof. It's all cotton lawn, muslin. It's all ah chiffon and all this stuff with like more serious things. Like toward the end of the movie, we do we do see Marie Antoinette Aging. Yeah. And evolving.
01:13:47
Speaker
And so, yes, we have these like powder puff, like for most of the movie, but then it gets more and more. ah sedate because even the chemise a la ran which was so scandalous because it looked like an and a underwear ah that is more sedate than a heavily heavily embroidered court gown and then towards the end when she and Louis are being told that they need to leave because this mob is heading in she's wearing this mauve gown
01:14:19
Speaker
And that's not a color that we've seen her head to toe in before. it's We've seen her in hot, saturated pinks. And this is a more grounded... And I think that the whole kind of last bit of the movie, like some actual like real things start touching her life. like Her children die. Not all of them, but two of them.
01:14:46
Speaker
And it's like the only thing that that happens to her in the movie that's like really serious and something that cannot be avoided with Money like a money could not...
01:14:59
Speaker
have an effect on that. And you you do see her become a bit more like somber and a bit more, and don't know if down to earth is the term, but like the reality of, of what is unescapable inescapable in life does start to touch her a little bit. It's not enough to change her, you know, and save her whatever. Like it doesn't have ultimately enough of an effect, like of a transformation on her, but like you do kind of see,
01:15:32
Speaker
The tides are turning slowly with yeah how she's received and how, whether she cares. i don't know. She's no longer peacocking. Yeah.
01:15:43
Speaker
She's just existing. And so it's like pretty, it's a great subtle, like arc. Subtle. But it's like towards the end.
01:15:55
Speaker
Towards the end. She's portrayed as more subtle. Yeah. Yeah, even so. And like her her close intimates who are leaving, they're also more subtle and sedate because they're wearing black and darker colors and that visual excess of blinding everybody has changed.
01:16:19
Speaker
It's like the more trying to and not be seen from a distance. yeah I really enjoyed the costuming in this so much. And I i really did like that.
01:16:32
Speaker
Of course it's Sofia Coppola. So she has her own style, but I could totally see the connection through the designer to Wes Anderson and that kind of sensibility of how the costumes can create this atmosphere.
01:16:49
Speaker
And like, that's, that's one of the things is that these costumes are atmospheric. Like every single scene truly is a tableau, every single one. And some are more subtle than others. Some are more,
01:17:02
Speaker
extreme than others. And um there's just, I hope like we have with other things that it was satisfying and that there was a good sense of enjoyment in designing these things because you are you have so much license with so a figure like Marie Antoinette to be like, let's, let's fucking do it. Let's go overboard. Let's stick a feather in that, put more ribbons on this. like Let's get crazy.
01:17:29
Speaker
there were Because we keep using the phrase tableau, just want emphasize there are a lot of bodies in this movie. There are a lot. That's what was thinking. There have to be. mean, that's like that's a facet of the reality of this place at this time is it's just – Public, everything that happens, everything that you do, there's always someone there looking at you, witnessing it, gossiping, talking about you, noticing how you pick up your fan and if you make eye contact with this person and if you talk to them and if you don't talk to them. And like, it's just...
01:18:03
Speaker
the reality of the time. And I i appreciate that they represented that so interestingly in this movie.
The Personal Connection of Costumers
01:18:11
Speaker
I wish that everybody at the end of their project could write like a paper or something about some of the process.
01:18:21
Speaker
Because it's just like how how many things were rented? How many things were you know taken from here or there, this place and how many garments were split up and like this actress in the background had the bodice, this one had the the skirts, you know all of these kinds of things. like We took the sleeves from this and put it on that and like what parts were built because this is such a big project that there's no way that everything could be totally built from scratch.
01:18:49
Speaker
Yeah, there were like a few things that I noticed that people shouted out like in the trivia on IMDb that were repurposed from a previous movie that this designer had done, which I haven't seen called ah Barry Lyndon. I've never seen that movie. Oh, okay. But apparently there were some key pieces that were that people spotted that are in both.
01:19:12
Speaker
um That's fun. Yeah. Yeah, but that's kind of nice. Like I've, I've seen designers do that for stage in the past where they're like, yes, they've designed something somewhere else, and they know what it is. And they call that place and say, Hey, I'm doing this project over here. Can you ship me this stuff from that and we can reuse it in this way?
01:19:29
Speaker
yeah And like, as a kind of like a closing thing. in For costumers I know from my own self, when you're building something, yes, you don't like have a deep emotional attachment to every project you work on, but your hands touched that thing.
01:19:44
Speaker
You know the other hands that touched all the other things. So those items, you might not remember every single one, but if you go to a rental house and you see your own work, if you go to a warehouse that's your storage for your theater company, whatever – you see your own work, the memories come flooding back and you might not remember a name, you might not remember specific date, but you remember the time in which that was made.
01:20:08
Speaker
And you remember the story of it. And that's part of what makes me love costume as a whole is that every single piece has a story.
01:20:19
Speaker
And I just like, I love that. And I love like the idea that some of these costumes will show up elsewhere in cinema and like how fun that they will because these are really beautifully made costumes.
01:20:33
Speaker
And I hope that they keep having a really thorough life. But this was a fun watch. I was not expecting to in like, it's just like a fun little ride and then you like look outside your window and you're like god damn it it's too close it's close will us humans ever learn no i think is the answer no no but what we can do for today is watch and talk about marie antoinette that's what we can do today tomorrow we'll do something else Well, that was Maureen Toinette. We did it.
01:21:07
Speaker
ah We made it. She did not survive the movie, but we did Please ah join us next time. We're going to be going back to a style of cinema that we did at the beginning of the season, and we're going to revisit that style with a new movie. So we're going to be watching the film House of Flying Daggers, which i have watched.
01:21:27
Speaker
never seen before. Yay!
01:21:33
Speaker
and I haven't seen it a long time, but um I remember some some fun stuff. happening so great remember it being very colorful and like just very strong again another thing with like visual tableau so i'm very excited to sounds appropriate can't wait to find out thanks for ah this fun time melinda you next time see you then bye